[tater]

There are no scripted planes in the Midway mission. The carriers ARE doing their own thing, but the CVs are not yet spawned.

Only CVs.

This problem is that scripted MISSIONS that contain CVs, put the TF groups in limbo between the campaign.cfg load date, and the actual mission start. As far as I can tell, the CV airgroups are NOT in this limbo, so it acts like an invisible, stationary CV wherever the scripted (non-random) group starts (the origin waypoint).

So what we see in the area between Midway and Tokyo is the airgroups from 4 CVs, and a CVL (Taiyo standing in for Hosho).

So it's Feb 2, 1942 and you go on patrol. Because it's >= 19420201, the Midway battle loads. The ships don't actually spawn in til ~June, but the game needs it on deck in case you have a super long patrol that lasts 4 months (would happen if that date was shorter, doesn't matter). So from the moment you spawn in on patrol, even though no CVs are on the map, the CV airgroups ARE on the map at the starting point of the group scripted to appear in 4 months (or 2 months, whatever).